Tarantella
by SolipsisticFury
Summary: In which Yohji engages in a bit of strategic voyeurism and Aya discovers his inner exhibitionist
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note -- _

_As fair warning, this was never meant to be posted in seperate chapters; however, as I'm working towards what will be my first explicit lemon, I've decided to take things as slowly as possible in order to get a better feel for the way these characters interact. I seldom write Yohji, and as such, my depiction of his character may be exceedingly off. Further, I've skewed Aya's characterization to suit my own purposes which may be off putting to some. And lastly, I abuse adjectives to an almost alarming extent. But I'm treating this as a cross between experiment and exercise, and I do sincerely hope that the eventual results will prove enjoyable and interesting despite the bumpy road taken to completion._

No one expected that he would know how to slink like an ingénue; that he would know how to walk into a room and tilt his head just so; that he would know how to exude sex with a sort of careless ease, drawing eyes and other things in his very noticeable direction.

He chooses the music he dances to carefully. He likes a persistent beat, something that slides through his body with deceptive grace and forces his limbs into an almost languid slither. It starts with the shoulders; the left dropping slightly and the right shrugging up to brush a pale, adorned ear. Through it all, he never really stops moving. Even when the music fades from one track to the next, his hands drag up and down the length of his

body, his hips circling slightly, his mouth falling open to allow a pink tongue to wet lightly bitten lips.

He's a sumptuous presence, aloof and alluring, but not possessed by the frenzy of the place like most. He doesn't seek to cling to a convenient body, choosing instead to sway gently in place, weaving his lithe figure with a strangely compelling dexterity and allowing a stretch of belly to peer over the too-tight jeans that have slipped arrestingly down thin hips.

To most, he's beguilingly elegant and just a little bit wanton as indolent strands of vermilion hair plaster themselves to sweat-sticky skin. He looks like he's ready to be used, and like he has been in the past; like an altar boy set to worship whose forgotten he's supposed to be Catholic.

Like an invitation.

He isn't surprised when wiry arms wrap around his torso, pulling him backwards against a long, warm body with less than gentle insistence. It happens often enough. They like to touch him. Defile him. Own him.

He usually grinds his hips a little, gives them a thrill; then disengages their grasping hands from his body with his own tricky fingers, amazing the voyeurs with a bit of practiced sleight of hand.

It's all just smoke and mirrors anyway.

But these arms are different. These arms clutch tenaciously; wound around his middle with all the persistence of a python. Where he would usually feel the heated slide of fingertips over his exposed flesh, now there was only the cool rasp of leather, and the promise of hidden hands fluttering over his skin like innuendo.

The sensation was maddening.

He would have turned around to utter some meaningless intimacy, some empty endearment, but those arms kept him pinned; held him flush against a lean, hard frame and stilled the restless inevitability of his movements.

He could feel strands of soft hair brushing against his face, trailing across his temple and down to the firm line of his chin, as his unrelenting captor leaned in to whisper something against the dainty shell of his ear.

When words were finally spoken, they came on a fervent exhalation, just loud enough to be discerned over the swirling bedlam of music and shouting voices, but soft enough to carry implications with every sibilant hiss.

"Hypocrite."

This wasn't the sort of flattery he was used to. He expected an empty appeal to his strange aesthetic; pretty, meaningless words meant to cajole him into a waiting bed. He expected hands to card through his hair and fingers to linger beneath the bruised purple of his eyes. But this was different. This was breaking all the rules he knew.

This was too close to the truth.

"You look like jailbait, _Ran_."

The name shot through his brain like a strategically orchestrated bullet. He froze, briefly, and then fought with renewed vigor to free himself from those damnably enrapturing arms.

When he finally managed to twist just slightly, the heady stench of expensive cigarette smoke assailed his senses. It clung to the diaphanous green silk stretched indecently across tawny skin, and lingered in an ambiguous haze around the comely lines of a very familiar face.

He was being watched, studied, dissected bit by bit as a pair of verdant green eyes traveled the length of his body and settled, disconcertingly, on the cross that lay against the pale hollow of his throat.

_Can you tell me who I am?_

_- - - _

Lips accustomed to lazy insouciance began to curl just slightly into a feral smirk as an eyebrow canted upwards in a mockery of speculation.

Kudoh Yohji was amused.

He had only come in for a drink; having drifted in from the fringes, following fragments of leftover conversation and the imperative lure of a hungry, propulsive rhythm. But as he sipped idly at a slow screwdriver and ran a cursory eye over the mass of bodies writhing before him, an illusory glimpse of florid red caught and held his usually transient attention.

That slight, ephemeral figure wasn't moving like everyone else. There was an eerie precision to his movements, something practiced and lethal. Every careless shrug of shoulders or liquid roll of hips belied a depth of hard-won control. He was hiding something in those movements, concealing something with every deliberate flurry of motion.

Yohji couldn't help but wonder what lay beneath the façade.

Never one for voyeurism, he set down his mostly empty glass and meandered gracefully through the throng of insensate flesh intent on sucking him back into its alluring maw. He brushed grasping hands from his body and ignored promises of assignations in dark corners, spurred on by a siren call of deadly grace.

When he finally stood just behind the peculiar dancer, a small, rakish smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as his initial suspicions proved correct. He'd know the rigid line of that body anywhere; the ceaseless bunch and flow of muscles, softest velvet over unflinching steel.

Even unaware, Aya's supple figure spoke of murder.

Yohji couldn't resist touching. The lurid breadth of so much soft skin begged for invasion. He thought, briefly, that he should remove his gloves. But the leather was cool and smooth against his fingers, and there was something decidedly apt in running obscured hands all over Aya's skin.

He really had no right to be so beautiful, to be such a temptation. But the lissome contours of Aya's slender body beckoned with an astonishing promise of seduction. He was elegant and flawless, a study in sharp lines and soft curves, the taper of lean calves and strong thighs leading inexorably upwards to a teasing sway of limber hips.

The chest that Yohji eventually wraps his arms around is compact and warm. He can feel the heat of Aya's body thrumming through his arms, permeating even the thick leather of his gloves as he skims careful hands beneath the hem of the indecent white shirt smeared over just enough of Aya's torso.

The words he finally utters are a surprise even to him. They fall from his mouth in a shocked whisper; with quiet accusation lurking beneath every syllable. The body that had been so fluid under his touch, stiffens imperceptibly, and tries to turn against the steady pressure of interlocked arms. But Yohji is nothing if not unrelenting, and though he allows Aya the smallest of twists, it's really only enough to expose the barest hint of a profile; enough for a limpid gaze to widen in startled recognition, and enough for lust to seep into Yohji's thoughts with amazing alacrity.

The space between capture and recognition had been alarmingly comfortable, when Yohji could feel the music throbbing through Aya's skin, and he had been allowed to touch with a new lover's anonymity. But when suspicious violet eyes widened in briefly horrified understanding, Yohji knew that the rules of this particular game were about to change considerably.


	2. Chapter 2

Yohji smelled like vodka. There was an antiseptic twang lingering in the air around his body, with a vaguely cloying hint of orange juice trailing languidly behind that irrepressible alcoholic bite. It was a distracting mélange; seeping past the maelstrom of Aya's spinning thoughts, and _suggesting_; working in tandem with the lithe body pressed flush against his own, effortlessly dragging wicked images from beneath his impressive veneer of unwavering exterior calm.

But even with a heady mixture of cold fear and astonishing desire singing itself through the synapses of his startled mind, Aya's unwavering control held true. He eyed Yohji with a sort of detached fascination; marveling covertly at the Cupid's bow curve to his lips and the slight blush of pink scattered across boyishly smooth cheeks. He wondered in particular at the nearly incandescent green of enthrallingly soft eyes, as Yohji was almost certainly a man who understood the subtle dynamics of a come-hither stare. He scanned the room around him almost sleepily, lids heavy, with lengthy blonde lashes dusting intimately over honey-gold cheeks; never once betraying any unwanted emotion… any seeming weakness.

These were bedroom eyes; eyes to get lost in.

_Eyes to be afraid of. _

It wasn't really until Yohji's long arms slipped slowly away from around his sides that Aya's resolve firmed. Even as he was being forcibly disentangled from this unnerving impromptu embrace, he found his shoulders squaring into a position of defiance, his chin lifting _just so_ to allow for a graceful inclination of the head, and his newly contemptuous stare speaking without words his intention to defy anything Kudoh Yohji might have to offer.

Even if it meant his salvation.

The truth was a tricky thing to navigate.

Yohji watched with no small amount of amusement as determination stiffened Aya's frame. He knew that stance, knew its meaning; its lack of nuance. There was truth in that defiance; it was a resounding _no _louder even than spoken language, and far more convincing than any pretense Aya might pretend to.

But in the end, one had to suppose that it was that very defiance to decide him.

After all, nothing rankled more than his ersatz leader's ostensible preoccupation with denial. Indeed, one even began to suspect that the man, however he might flirt with seduction, had no appetites at all; that he held no desires, no voracious urges begging to be sated; that underneath all of that pretty, pale flesh there was a great expanse of nothing. Even seeing him here, watching him play the libertine so very well, only made the lie that much more glaring.

It made it easier for Yohji to rationalize the deeds he had moved beyond contemplating. When decision had slid unerringly into action, he wasn't quite certain, but Aya was about to come slamming up against his own deceptions in a decidedly interesting manner.

"You're really rather a whore, aren't you."

Aya raised a carefully constructed brow in mild surprise. Yohji seemed determined to unseat his rationality with every word he uttered. Indeed, the rage came hard on the heels of Yohji's casually offensive question. It was always too easy to find. And now, it reverberated through his fingers and up his arms, wound its way around his torso and into the corded muscles of his neck. It beat, beat, beat against his insides with a heady tick-tock rhythm; its strident appeal almost too much to withstand.

Violence was a stock response these days. The slick pull of metal against flesh, the soft and strange impact of bone against bone. But he came here to pretend away such things, to maybe lie to himself for just a little while. And even though it was mostly an exercise in futility, an epic performance of theatrical absurdity, his stage was already set and there was little he would allow to wreck such fastidious self-deceit.

But even as he tried to concentrate on stilling his hands and forcing slow, even breaths from between expressionless lips, Yohji's eyes narrowed, and cool, gloved fingers wrapped around his wrist with a near-crushing intensity.

Aya fought down the ridiculous urge to squeal an indignant protest. The words of shocked displeasure swam up his throat and around the too-dry contours of his mouth, but never quite became actual sounds. Even as he was forced through the crowd, weaving none-too-kindly through the clamor of bodies poised to distract like unruly children, nothing beyond a harassed sigh fought its way into quiet existence.

All the while, the tug on his wrist remained stubbornly insistent. It forced them between what could only be called horizontal displays of vertical affection, and through a steady string of broken caresses. They struggled past the dim chaos of the bar, and beyond a bizarrely bright wall of artistically shattered mirrors.

It wasn't really until they reached a yawning expanse of night-dark obscurity that Aya stopped fighting and started to wonder where exactly they were going.

Yohji knew exactly where they were going. The bathrooms would hardly prove a private venue for his currently carnal leanings, but it was the best he could do with circumstances such as they were.

He had managed to maneuver them to the rear hallways, littered with couples even less discreet than he, and feeling Aya's resistance the entire way. His grip remained obdurately firm even as he shouldered through the knot of indistinguishable flesh currently blockading the bathroom door like some eccentrically ironic honor guard.

The bathroom itself was murky, adorned by a flickering array of badly yellowed fluorescents and an excess of cracked porcelain. But Yohji pushed relentlessly forward, heedless of the decay, and swung his pale teammate impatiently against white tile – surprisingly clean for this bathroom – and watched intently as a spill of dirty sulfur light revealed the sharp contours of Aya's face, tinting everything to the pale sepia of distorted film, and leaving him exposed; illuminated like a room with too many windows.

The face filling his vision was neither angry, nor surprised. It did not crease with confusion or wariness, but instead, relaxed into the unfamiliar lines of resignation. Apathy stole across delicate features, collapsing a stubbornly beautiful mouth into gentle predictability.

This, beyond anything else, consumed Yohji with an almost inexplicable rage. He wanted the fight, expected it. A willing Aya… a pliable Aya… this was not the man he had dragged all but unwillingly into a backlit bathroom. This was a different creature entirely. An anomaly. And a mistake.

The hands resting almost lightly against Aya's elegant shoulders tightened imperceptibly, long fingers curling possessively over the whipcord steel of pale biceps.

He wanted the fight. But he could certainly proceed without it.


End file.
